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'60s TGs in Singapore
By Mardi Clark
Bugis Street, currently showing in Seattle, is the
latest film in the "transgender" genre to come down
the pike. Set and filmed on location in Singapore by veteran Hong
Kong director Yon Fan ("In Between", 1993 and "Promising
Miss Bowie", 1990) and starring Vietnamese actress Hiep Thi
Le as Lien (Oliver Stone's "Heaven and Earth" 1993 and
"Dead Men Can't Dance" 1996) as a 16- year-old girl
who steps off a boat from her rural island home to take a job
as a desk clerk and maid at the Sin Sin Hotel on Bugis Street in the late 1960s.
Seemingly populated by beautiful single women, she soon discovers
two shocking realities in rather quick succession...first that
the Sin Sin Hotel rents their rooms by the hour and second..._all_
the girls are "ladyboys" ...transvestites and transexuals!
The film deals with basically two issues; a depiction
of the life of the ladyboy prostitutes in Singapore and Lien's
coming of age as a woman (she has her first period in the midst
of a ladyboy catfight). The reality of dealing with issues like
boyfriends, dating, and femininity, let alone attitudes about
sexuality, take on a unique perspective in the environment in
which Lien finds herself...for instance the mixture of camp, humor
and tradjedy is implicit in the sequence where the girls "fix
up" Lien in their version of femininity--black vinyl mini
and stiletto heeled thi-hi's...and comment that "She's gonna
make _lots_ of money!" Her interaction with a girl's live-in
boyfriend is a darkly humorous but basically tragic spin of a
seemingly unavoidable fate---which when played against her unfulfilled
teenaged infatuation with a nameless student of a nearby academy,
illuminates the depth and distance between what is -- and, for
her, what will never be.
The depiction of the lives of the girls is presented
in several ways...first in their interactions with their customers,
as with a young American sailor early in the film, to "interviews"
staged as home movies taken of each other during their off time.
Since these girls are the genuine article and not actresses (_that_
is often glaringly obvious...), parts of the film have an almost
documentary aspect which I found very interesting.
Also explored was their relationship with their neighborhood,
customers, their boyfriends and each other-- relationships often
violent and alternately sexual and sometimes frought with a real
ambivalence but always starkly portrayed as either light or dark.
The shock of seeing a character go from a screaming, violent characature
of a whore to a kind, empathetic "big-sister" is wrenching
in it's reality and illuminating of the flawed depths within us
all. That the film covers a lot of ground and utilizes simply
too many significant characters while failing to fully develop
any single one (with the exception of Lien), is regrettable...one
is left wanting to get to know some of these girls a bit better.
The arrival of Lola, an exquisite girl affecting
haughty glamour just returned from the far-away high-society wonderland
of Paree, gives a needed injection of character and life into
the film. Back to be with her mother who is dying in the local
hospital, Lola seems at first to be a distant and contrived person.
But through Lien's innocence and the circumstance of her mother's
impending death, she is brought back to earth and finds herself
unmasked in more than a figurativly emotional way as well. The
depiction of her emerging humanity is actually one of the better
parts of the movie. Alternately hawking cosmetics to the other
girls (how about some "Breast Enhancer Cream, hmmm?) and
pretentiously flaunting her Parisian sensibilities towards a sometimes
unappreciative and skeptical audience of her fellow "guests",
she develops a mentoring friendship with Lien, but one which eventually
becomes more concerned with issues of direction and worth in the
circumstances they both find themselves. The threat of a seemingly
inevitable future in prostitution for the once innocent and childlishly
optomistic Lien confronts her with questions of what happiness
is ...and where to find it in a place many would consider hopelessly
depraved.
"Bugis Street" is currently playing at
the Broadway Market Theater in Seattle,WA. It was previously shown
at several film festivals, such as the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian
film Festival and the Vancouver Film Festival earlier this year.
For more information on future showings etc. go to the distributor's
website http://www.marginfilms.com.
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